An industry consortium devoted to promoting rewritable and write-once DVD standards. Founded in 1997 by HP, Philips, Sony and others, it developed the DVD+RW specification as an evolution of the CD-RW format. The Alliance was formed to provide a format that was more compatible with consumer DVD players than the DVD-RAM format that was being developed by the DVD Forum at that time. "Plus RW" and "Plus R" are commonly used to refer to the DVD+RW and DVD+R formats of the Alliance compared to the DVD Forum's DVD-RW and DVD-R. See
DVD Forum and
DVD.